Book Review: Covering Business Guide Offers Solid Investigative Techniques

In the past five years, four business journalism textbooks have been published. Each of them has strengths and weaknesses and provides perspective on the job of being a business reporter. But the latest entry into the field covers two areas that the other three, for the most part, neglect -- investigative business reporting and the often-difficult task of writing business stories.

The latest is Covering Business: A Guide to Aggressively Reporting on Commerce and Developing a Powerful Business Beat, published in July by Marion Street Press, a Chicago-area book publisher that specializes in books that helps journalists do their jobs better. It's written by Robert Reed, a longtime business journalist in the Chicago area, and Glenn Lewin, a freelance journalist.

The co-authors take turns writing the separate chapters, and the book's short length -- 124 pages -- makes it an easy read. In addition, the chapters contain sidebars that include some nice advice, such as business jargon to avoid in stories. The writing also includes example after example of Web sites and print resources for a business journalist to use to perform various reporting tasks.

But the strength of the book lies in its examination of how to report an investigative business story, as well as how to write business news. None of the other current textbooks, including my own, spends much time on this topic. For that reason, this book can be a valuable addition to the newsroom or the classroom.

I was particularly impressed with chapters six through eight, which provide a three-part paper trail of how to find information about public and private companies and by using databases and the Internet. Although many of the reporting tactics suggested here have been discussed in the other books, Lewin -- the author of these three chapters -- does an excellent job of going beyond the basics.

For example, the sixth chapter explains in plain language some of the financial shenanigans that companies attempt with their balance sheets, such as one-time gains and shifting expenses to later quarters. Chapter eight discusses some basic Internet searches and provides specific keywords to use when examining a topic or issue. In addition, in chapter five, Lewin goes through how he handled the reporting and writing of an investigative business story about an Alabama company that was conning people out of their money.

When the book gets into the writing process, there are some solid examples of how specific stories should be written, with the nuances of certain events affecting leads and story organization. In one example, Reed explains how to write a story about a company that has announced that it will take a charge to its earnings to settle some long-standing litigation. Because the stock rose 10 percent on the day that the announcement was made, the lead should focus on the fact that investors were happy that the company is putting the litigation behind it.

Each section also provides good questions that reporters should ask themselves when writing specific stories or interviewing specific people on a business beat.

These strengths outweigh some of the omissions in the book. For example, in chapter three, Reed provides a list of beats that are "so pervasive that no newspaper can thrive without them." However, the required beat list ignores economics coverage, a beat that is the full-time job of reporters at newspapers as small as The (Raleigh) News & Observer and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, two newspapers with 200,000 in circulation and smaller. The beat discussion, however, does make the smart suggestion that business desks should be covering the business of government more frequently.

The book also could have done more to delve into some important topics for business journalists today, such as reading financial statements to comprehend what the numbers mean and evaluating more how a business desk operates. Some of the explanations of the job of a business editor and assistant business editor seem too pedestrian for those who have spent time in the field. Maybe this area was aimed at readers entering business journalism from another part of the newspaper.

Still, Lewin and Reed have done the field a service by continuing to push the envelope and provide another resource for current and potential business journalists to use when practicing the craft.

Copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism